Thank you for that wonderful substantive edit Cyangmou! Super psyched looking at your changes, you really honed in on the elements I forgot about or got lazy with.

I'm not quite done with the edit yet but I wanted to get something down before my week of study started.toor

One issue I have in general is creating heavily hue shifted ramps with very little tonal contrast out of habit (and perhaps colour blindness). However I over compensated with this picture and made everything a way too bland, your edit really pushed the colours in a nicer direction. I didn't push it quite to the same extreme but even still, the picture is really popping now.

I love love love what you did with the clouds. My new ones are still a touch rough but I feel lousy about not giving them any attention before what so ever. I tend to treat backgrounds as an afterthought, a habit I badly need to break. I think i'll likewise completely redo the leaves and get them into some nicer shapes and forms as @Manupix was saying as well.

I did a version where I replaced that messy red/brown on the clothing with a more "witchy" dark blue on for the hat and top and boots. Not sure which works more, my instincts tell me the blue brings a bit more vibrancy but what colour balancing I did was done with the green and red/brown so maybe I should stick with that.

Drop shadows haven't made it onto the pig yet. They looked nice but i'm considering how complex I want the shading to be. I'll get back to this with a verdict.

My colour pallet is still a little weaker then yours, and maybe i'm a being a little to timid, but i'm still a lot happier with the picture over all. I'll re-approach it in a week, any further suggestions on what i've done so far would of course be welcome.

I'm finally finished study (whew) so I can actually start dedicating some time back to my personal process. Last time i posted, like a month ago, I said I wanted to redo the background on axewitch, but a little too much time has passed to keep me interested so while the background is a problem I think its an issue i'll tackle with a future piece.

I have started something new however,

Still some cleaning left to do but otherwise on track. A little unsure if a background is in order, and if it is, what of? So some thoughts there would be nice. I've tried to keep the pallet a little more saturated and interesting in this one, so it would be nice to know if that's working or not as well.

Thanks for your crit Evil, very helpful. You've got a good eye if you ask me.

I like to do pixel art at this size because I think it makes me more exacting in my art. I think it gives me a way to focus on elements I consider more fundamental, such as pose and colour, without worrying about things I consider peripheral, like line weight or complex shading. It also gives me a lot of control. I might not stick with this approach forever, but its fun for the time being.

So,

Flipped the pose, I like having the spear looking like it's in reach this way.

Evened her arms up.

Pushed her head and neck back, it was way to far forward, I think this was unbalancing the pose

Hands, well, yeah I need tons of practice, still I cleaned them up and tried to make them less awful

Changed the weapon design, and shrunk it down, to look like something actually functional

A million other tiny changes and general cleaning

The biggest issue remains the hands, they sit a bit flat and are lost in the detail. Not sure what to do about that, if anyone has any advice? beyond that I still have some touch ups and a little shading to get too but crits are still very welcome.

the nearest arm looks a bit short to me, and the other hand holding it looks like its warping a bit to do that. i find those circular details on the back of the hands a bit distracting when trying to think about the pose, id delete them for now!

as for making them stand out a bit more, theres less detail and shading on them compared to the surrounding chest/head/shoulders area and theyre not casting a shadow so that wont help. have you thought about trying to introduce different line-widths into your work? i think line-width is often used to add depth in art like this.

yeah i like it. its hard to tell why shes looking at the hand now though - before it looked like her hand was hurting because she was grabbing it by the wrist with the other hand. if you change the hands pose a bit it could look more like shes inspecting it or looking at something she is holding in her palm

rough edit -

something like that maybe? excuse my drawing lol

also the furthest shoulder would need redrawing because its still rolled forward from when the arm was coming across her, but im sure youre aware of that